Last Halloween, my younger sister took one of my brother's old black t-shirts, frayed the fabric, and tied it around the bottom half of her face like an improvised beard. That October he went trick-or-treating as his favorite YouTube vlogger, Shay Carl. For five years he has followed the "Shaytards" channel, and his devotion to family is evident from the Shaytards merchandise he owns, to his Twitter feed (consisting mostly of Shay Carl's tweets), to how he will sing "I Got My Soccers On" around around the house like it was a hit song he heard on the radio. While my sister isn't as radically fanatical as I've led her to believe (mostly jokingly), she genuinely adores the Butler family. When he introduced me to the Shaytards, I immediately understood why: amidst all the noise, ruckus and wild pranks, unfiltered affection permeates the entire house. At the same time, though, I wondered what kind of impact growing up in a household so saturated with technology and with sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter so accessible would have on the Butler children's lives. Many celebrate social networking sites as natural outcomes of an evolving society, tools that can be leveraged to make great strides. However, I argue that the balance tips towards the negative aspects of social media, especially when children are involved, due to the deleterious effects that an addiction to this technology can have on young people's relationship development, mental health, self-esteem and academic achievement. Our family, friends, classmates, colleagues – the relationships we cultivate with these people contribute immensely to our overall satisfaction with life. Indeed, Abraham Maslow defined love and the need to belong as fundamental and... at the center of the paper... the negative effects that digital communication has on today's younger generations as they enter adolescence and early adulthood. How might ten-year-old Gavin's relationships be affected in the future as technology becomes incorporated into every aspect of his life? Will eight-year-old Avia face problems at school that she wouldn't have had to face if vlogging and social media hadn't been such vital components of her upbringing? What about six-year-old Emmi, who has already started making short vlogs and daydreams about designing her own YouTube channel? For those with an admirable passion for family, taking into account the deleterious effects of digital communication is essential to guarantee the best quality of life for their children as they transition to adolescence, when the use of such social networking platforms could increase..